From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
meeting though no longer a Council member, was more cautious.  He
suggested it would take years to obtain passage.  Nevertheless,
he fully supported moving forward to initiate the requisite
education process. 
     Senator Weicker officially agreed to be the bill s sponsor:
he was absolutely crucial in giving the ADA its life.For
congressional sponsorship, Parrino turned first to Senator
Weicker, with whom NCD had a long standing relationship.  Weicker
was one of the disabil ity community s greatest advocates in the
Senate. This was in part because Weicker had personal experi ence
with disability through his son, who had Down s Syndrome.  For
Weicker, however, interest in disability issues stemmed from a
broader philosophical and political commitment to assisting those
in need.   He was a man of very strong principles about the role
of government and the responsibility for caring for those who
were less fortunate,  said Terry Muilenburg who worked on his
staff.  This applied to elderly persons and people of
lower-income as well as to people with disabilities.  At times
Weicker acted as  the conscience of the Senate  to defend the
constitutionality of an active Federal Government, Muilenburg
added. Weicker was a fitting congressional contact because he had
played a pivotal role in ensuring that NCD stayed alive in 1983. 
Early in 1987, during a meeting with Parrino, he had indicated a
willingness to support disability rights legislation if NCD
drafted a proposal.  Now Weicker officially agreed to be the
bill s sponsor: he was absolutely crucial in giving the ADA its
life.
     For the ADA to succeed, Senator Weicker emphasized that the
bill would have to be introduced simultaneously in both houses of
Congress.  He recommended that NCD contact Congressman Coelho,
who was, coincidentally, a close friend of NCD member Roxanne
Vierra s husband, to sponsor the House bill.  Coelho also had
epilepsy, and was becoming a public advocate for people with
disabilities.  Although Congressman Coelho s staff cautioned him
against sponsor ing the bill for fear that it would not win the
support of the broader disability community, Coelho agreed to
sponsor it.  Senator Weicker later encouraged NCD to begin
working closely with Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA).  Harkin was
Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, which would
likely have jurisdiction over the bill in the Senate. 
     While NCD s solid reputation with Congress helped in finding
congressional sponsors, enlisting the support of the disability
community proved more difficult.  Many persons in the disability
community had been working toward the goals, shared by NCD, of
equal opportunity and full participation; some strove for civil
rights legislation akin to NCD s proposal.  But many people in
the disability community viewed NCD with apprehension.  While NCD
collaborated with persons with disabilities throughout the
country, NCD generally did not work closely with leading
disability organizations, especially those that had been
championing recent legislative campaigns.  Moreover, given the
context of the Reagan administration s civil rights record, some
questioned NCD s motives.  Some NCD members, on the other hand,
suspected that others were envious of NCD for being the first to
draft civil rights legislation.  For these and other reasons, the
relationship between much of the disability community and NCD was
strained.  
     Prior to the November Council meeting, Burgdorf met with
representatives of the Consor tium for Citizens with
Developmental Disabilities (CCD) to discuss the bill. At a later
meeting convened by Terry Muilenburg of Senator Weicker s staff,
CCD members stated that they opposed the bill as written.  Their
greatest concern was that they did not want the ADA to undermine
the coverage of Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. 
Securing the Section 504 regulations had been a protracted
battle, and the regulations had been subsequently assaulted by
President Reagan s Task Force on Regulatory Relief just a few
years before.  CCD feared that if the provi sions of Section 503
and 504 were included in the ADA it would mean the regulations
were back on the bloc, and an administration unfriendly to
disability rights could substantially rewrite and weaken them. 
As an alternative, CCD proposed what became known as the
 donut-hole  approach: leave what was already established alone,
and write the ADA around it to cover everything left out.
     CCD also argued that the ADA should not enforce standards
inconsistent with those afforded to other minority groups.  The
disability community was in the midst of working with the civil
rights community on the Fair Housing Amendments Act.  Passage of
the ADA would require the full backing of the civil rights
community, so it was important to advocate the same protections.
For example, while many people in the disability community
believed health insurance should be a part of the ADA because
people with disabilities often could not find affordable health
care, health insurance was not a protection afforded to any other
group.  In a more general sense, CCD expressed concern about
incorporating new language and new terms, such as a revised
definition of disability.  They urged that NCD use language from
Section 504, which would help secure congressional support
because it was familiar.  At the November Council meeting,
members voted on the draft of the ADA and rejected changes
proposed by CCD.  Three days later, however, Senator Weicker met
with a variety of disability groups and decided, together with
Senator Harkin, that Sections 503 and 504 and health insurance
needed to be dropped from the ADA.  Although a variety of factors
warranted the exclusion of health insurance, Weicker s
representation of Connecti cut, where insurance was a major
industry, made the inclusion impractical. 
     Senator Weicker urged NCD to accede to the disability
community s changes, but NCD bristled because it was afraid to
weaken its legislative proposal.  Chairperson Parrino suggested
getting a broader range of opinion from persons outside
Washington at a meeting coinciding with the February Council
meeting, on February 9, 1988.  In the meantime, NCD was preparing
its 1988 report, On the Threshold of Independence.  The report
evaluated progress made since its 1986 report, Toward
Independence, on each of the ten topics.  At the suggestion of
Public Affairs Specialist Andrea Farbman, NCD decided to include
the current draft of the ADA in its discussion of the equal
opportunity law recommendation, hoping to draw further attention
to the ADA and enlist grass roots support.
     Discrimination on the basis of disability is  just as
intolerable as other types of discrimination that our civil
rights laws forbid. 
          Senator Lowell Weicker   On February 9, representatives
from around the country gathered at NCD s quarterly meeting. 
There they formed working groups and unanimously agreed to remove
Sections 503 and 504 and health insurance from the purview of the
Americans with Disabilities Act.  On the following day, NCD
decided to circulate the bill, with these changes, to Congress
and the Reagan administration.  Negotiations with the disabil ity
community continued after the February Council meeting, but
Weicker, faced with a string of proposals from the disability
commu nity, decided to honor NCD s work in drafting the
legislation and forge ahead with its version of the ADA.
     On April 28, 1988, Senator Weicker introduced the Americans
with Disabilities Act on the floor of the United States Senate. 
He called the legislation  historic,  and said that it  will
establish a broad-scoped prohibition of discrimination and will
describe specific methods by which such discrimination is to be
eliminated.   He compared the conditions faced by persons with
disabilities to those faced by minorities in the 1960s.  Civil
rights advocates then argued forcefully and demonstratively that
no person, because of race or national origin, should be
discriminated against in obtaining access to public
accommodations, use of transit, employment opportunities,
services of state and local governments, and housing.  Laws
prohibited this type of discrimination by business owners,
employers, and governments, Weicker said.   Yet, today,  he
noted,  it is not unlawful for these same establishments to
exclude, mistreat, or otherwise discriminate against people
because of their disabilities.   He contended that discrimination
on the basis of handicap was  just as intolerable as other types
of discrimination that our civil rights laws forbid.   The
following day, Congressman Coelho joined Weicker by introducing
an identical bill to the floor of the House of Representatives. 
Civil rights for persons with disabilities had entered the
national, legislative agenda.
     NCD s role did not end with Senator Weicker s final
acceptance and introduction of their proposal, but in a very real
sense the baton was being passed from NCD to congressional
sponsors and the disability community.  NCD was in an awkward
position.  Although NCD could present legislative proposals and
justify its recommendations by offering  technical information, 
federal law at the time prevented NCD members and staff, as all
employees of federal agencies, from personally lobbying members
of Congress.  In lieu of formal lobbying, NCD members made
presentations in their home towns and in their professional
circles.  Chairperson Parrino met extensively with officials in
the White House and helped pave the way for favorable action on
the ADA by the Bush administration.  She also gave important
congressional testimony on multiple occasions. 
     NCD performed the crucial function of documenting a problem,
crafting a solution, and securing a foothold in Congress.NCD s
presence was also carried forward as Frieden and Burgdorf
resigned to take positions where they could exert more direct
influence.  Frieden, for example, became Executive Director of
the congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of
Persons with Disabilities, which played an important role in
documenting the need for the ADA.  Some members felt slighted by
the transition in ADA leadership.  But it was actually a
testament to their success NCD had accomplished its mission. No
other single disability organization could have introduced a
proposal to Congress with the same authority NCD possessed as an
independent federal agency.  NCD had performed the crucial
function of documenting a problem, crafting a solution, and
securing a foothold in Congress.  It brought people to the table
to develop a workable solution with substantial consensus.  Now
NCD would join the ranks of other organizations and thousands of
individuals in educating America about the ADA. 

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                      Publicizing the ADA: 
              Advocacy and the Government Response
Gallaudet University erupted on March 1, 1988, as an estimated
1,500 alumni, students, faculty, and community supporters rallied
to demand the selection of the university s first deaf president. 
The board of trustees had narrowed its candidate pool to three:
Harvey J. Corson and I. King Jordan, both deaf; and Elizabeth A.
Zinser, who neither had a hearing impairment nor understood sign
language.  On the evening of March 6, under the leadership of
Chairperson Jane Bassett Spilman, the board selected Zinser as
president.  Hundreds of students, alumni, and others responded
the next morning by shutting down the school: they organized
before dawn and blocked every campus entrance.  They even
searched cars and planned to lie on the ground to prevent a
helicopter from landing in the event that Zinser tried to step
foot on campus (she never did).  They also marched to Capitol
Hill and demonstrated at the White House. 
     Later that day, a ten-person delegation representing
students, faculty, and alumni issued four demands to the board:
appoint a deaf president; demand Spilman s resignation; protect
protestors from punishment; and designate a majority of the
board s seats for deaf persons.  But the board rejected the
demands.  At a meeting in the field house that followed, where
Spilman appealed to a crowd of protesters to give Zinser a
chance, students shouted down Spilman, sounded a fire alarm to
obstruct her presentation, and taunted her:  If you could sign,
we could hear you.   The following day, on March 8, the group
hung Zinser and Spilman in effigy; later they cut them down and
burned them.
     The volatile activity on the campus of the world s only deaf
university was front-page news; people from around the world lent
their support.  Senator Robert Dole (R-KS), Congressmen David E.
Bonior (D-MI) and Tony Coelho (D-CA), and Vice President George
Bush backed selection of a deaf president.  Bonior threatened
that the university might lose government funding, which
accounted for 75 percent of its budget, unless it met
demonstrators  demands. 
     The Deaf President Now! protest  proved, convincingly, that
deaf people could band together effectively for a common cause
and succeed.  
          Jack Gannon    To students, alumni, and faculty, the
selection of a deaf president symbolized deaf persons  attempt to
attain full citizenship, equal participation, and self-direction. 
 The time has come for the plantation mentality, which has for so
long controlled this institution and others serving the deaf, to
end,  psychology professor Allen Sussman said.   We want to be
free from hearing oppression,  student leader Bridgette Bourne
declared.   We don t want to live off the hearing world, we want
to live as independent people,  she continued.  Freshman John
Limmidis opined:  We believe that we have to fight to prove to
the world that a deaf person is just as good as a hearing
person.   The presidency of Gallaudet was the highest position in
the deaf community; a decision to bypass a deaf person for that
office broadcasted the message that hearing persons were better
suited for power and leadership.  Consequently, it questioned the
potential of deaf persons in other employment and social
opportunities.  Like racial minori ties and women, the deaf
community wanted the empowerment and legitimacy that comes with
leadership from one s own ranks. 
     On March 10, under relentless pressure, Zinser submitted her
resignation.  The following day the board acceded to the
protestors  demands: it appointed Jordan president, accepted
Spilman s resignation, committed to reconstituting the board, and
dismissed repercussions for demonstrating. It was a huge victory
for the deaf community.  As one historian said, the protest
 proved, convinc ingly, that deaf people could band together
effectively for a common cause and succeed.  
     The protest also benefitted and strengthened the disability
community as a whole.  Students  demands for self-direction,
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